Co-written by Christina Phan, Senior Staff Writer & Kurt Whitman, Editor in Chief
THE SBA ELECTION IS HERE!
Election season has commenced. On the Tuesday after Spring Break, students arrived to campus to find posters and fliers announcing the candidacy of several students interested in representing the USD Law student body as members of next year’s Student Bar Association. Many students were surprised to learn that campaigning had begun, and even more surprised to learn that the period for declaring one’s candidacy had ended that very day. The surprise was a result of what many students believe to be a lack of communication between the SBA and the student body.
Unlike last year, there was no official e-mail announcement informing students that elections or deadlines were approaching. According to some students, there were no prominently displayed signs or easily researchable information regarding upcoming elections. If true, this lack of communication was significant because SBA officer positions are especially coveted due to their inherent networking opportunities and prestige. What sparked much of the student concern, though, was that seemingly unfair elections would not allow all students an opportunity to run as an official candidate, which meant that specific Executive Board candidates would be more likely to receive SBA stipends.
THE SBA STIPENDS
According to Dean Scivoletto, “USD has historically provided activity grants to five SBA officers for their service to the school. The SBA President received approximately $10,000 per semester, while both Vice Presidents, the Secretary, and the Treasurer received approximately $1,800 per semester.”
But next year will be different.
Dean Scivoletto explained, “For the 2011-12 academic year (and continuing), USD Leadership Scholarships will be available via application for SBA Officers and other student leaders. Awarding of scholarships will be based on need, leadership abilities and potential, and the leadership role of the student.”
COMMUNICATION CONCERNS: LACK OF NOTIFICATION
One student contacted the current SBA Executive Board to address concerns about the lack of notification. The current SBA President responded to the student via e-mail:
“…the elections were publicized multiple times in the SBA meetings which are open to all students, in the SBA minutes of multiple meetings, which the secretary posts on the SBA office door and e-mails out to all clubs, and the class representative e-mails, which go to all students who desire to receive them. This certainly constitutes sufficient publication by any standard. Although the Office of Student Affairs does have the listserve for the entire student body, because students get a lot of emails from lawstudentaffairs and they try to keep the e-mails they send on the SBA’s behalf to a minimum.” [sic]
When the SBA President’s e-mail became viral, many students felt that it was not an adequate and fair representation of the notification process. SBA meetings are always held on a Monday, during the lunch hour. Therefore, if individuals must work or have other out-of-school responsibilities and are not available on Mondays around noon, they would not be able to hear information publicized at those meetings. Also, one student noted that on the SBA office door and wall, the latest set of minutes posted is from last October. Other students, some of which are active members and officers of student organizations, likewise did not receive notification of the election calendar.
Dean Scivoletto confirmed that the Office for J.D. Student Affairs regularly grants requests to send e-mails from student organizations. There is no indication that the office actively limits communication from the SBA to the student body. Also, the opt-in e-mail service, started by the elected student representatives, was not widely known to the student body. To opt-in to the e-mail service, students needed to e-mail the 2L or 3L e-mail account and request to be included in future correspondence. Notification of the account e-mail address was disseminated via Facebook. If individuals do not use Facebook on a regular basis, or are not Facebook friends with the elected representatives, they would likely not have known about the opportunity to receive weekly e-mail updates.
The weekly e-mail list is not a program initiated by the SBA; it is an independent procedure initiated by student representatives to communicate upcoming events and announcements to the student body. The SBA Executive Board itself never notified students that if they wanted to receive a weekly e-mail, they should contact their representatives to be added to the list.
COMMUNICATION CONCERNS: THE SBA WEBSITE
Another communication-related concern involves the SBA website. On its “About Us” page, the website states that the SBA is “the student voice before the faculty and administration.” The page also states, “This website . . . was created to assist clubs in scheduling events and communicating those events to the student body.” The SBA website’s most recent posting promotes the Barrister’s Ball. The next most recent is a “Happy Thanksgiving” post. There is no information on the site discussing this year’s elections and no workable calendar informing students of this year’s dates and deadlines. The SBA President, on behalf of the Executive Board, addressed this issue with the following statement:
“The SBA has been working with a student [to] rework the back end operations of the SBA website to make it manageable for those of us not fluent in HTML and other programming languages. It has been a long and laborious process. Unfortunately budget constraints make it unfeasible for us to hire a full-time programmer to assist with with [sic] this task while maintaining student activities and programs. Any student who is interested in assisting with the reworking may contact us, [sic] your help would be greatly appreciated!” 1
Motions understands the time and effort it takes to create a successful website. Motions Online is a WordPress blog—just like the SBA’s site. Even though creation and maintenance of a WordPress blog does not require computer programming experience nor require knowledge of html, managing a website can nonetheless be a tedious task. Our Web Editor spends about 20 hours per month managing Motions Online.
Our Editor in Chief e-mailed the SBA in September to request publicity for our website’s launch.2 The Editor in Chief also suggested collaborating with the SBA for event posting purposes. The SBA never publicized the debut of Motions Online, and although an SBA officer did promise to “make sure to bring it up,” nothing ever arose from the collaboration idea either. One week later, on September 29, 2010, Motions Online debuted.
The SBA website uploaded its first post on October 12, 2010. The post states:
The SBA Website is back online!
In the coming weeks, we’ll be updating the website with new features and services that will benefit the USD Law School Student Body. Stay tuned!
On October 18 and October 26, 3L Representatives sent out an SBA weekly email that included the following announcement about the SBA website:
“[The website] is currently undergoing a major renovation to make it more user-friendly and current. It is still pending, but it will be AWESOME when it’s up!!!”3
COMMUNICATION CONCERNS: RELIANCE ON FACEBOOK
Concern over the SBA’s lack of communication to students has been a pivotal issue throughout the year. The SBA has primarily disseminated information about social events hosted or supported by the SBA itself (e.g., Halloween Party, Barrister’s Ball, Bar Reviews). The SBA typically hangs posters and distributes fliers advertising its events. It also sends e-mails through the Student Affairs Office. And there is vigorous communication and publicity about SBA social events on Facebook. The SBA Social Chair has a Facebook page that is constantly updated; event reminders and message reminders are sent to students on a continual basis. However, the SBA has generally refrained from Facebook notifications about non-social engagements. The USD SBA Facebook page has not been updated since last year and lists contact information for last year’s Executive Board.
The vast majority of SBA campaigning during these elections has occurred over Facebook via status updates and event pages. Some candidates are even developing creative YouTube videos and posting them on Facebook. Although there will be no SBA presidential debate this year, candidates have been answering questions on their event pages to help validate their credentials. But USD Law does not require students to communicate via Facebook, and students were not notified about the option to receive information via social networking. In fact, many students do not even have a Facebook account.
THE ELECTION APPEALS
Concerned about the SBA’s lack of communication regarding the election, several students filed appeals to the Election Committee.4 After tensions mounted within Facebook posts, on Tuesday evening (one week before the elections), the SBA Executive Board held an emergency meeting to try and rectify the situation as quickly and prudently as possible.
After the emergency meeting, an Election Committee was appointed and the General Council was asked via email to approve it.5 That same evening, an e-mail was sent to all law students informing them that the declaration filing deadline had been extended from Tuesday, March 22 at 9:30 a.m. to Friday, March 25 at 9:30 a.m. The voting date remains the same: Elections will still be held on Tuesday, March 29 and Wednesday, March 30.
Because of the extensions, the two candidates who were formerly write-ins are now on the ballot. Additionally, several new candidates have entered the race. Though these candidates have had a limited time frame to campaign, they now have the opportunity to rally their base, plead their case, and elicit student votes. The tense exchanges that occurred on Facebook involving the communication and notification process of the SBA seem to have diminished. Candidates and interested voters are now focused on the issues more central to the future of USD Law.
THE FUTURE SBA
As any executive board should expect, next year’s SBA will face confrontation, concerns, and challenges. The most significant challenge for the 2011-2012 Board will likely be improving communication from the SBA to the students. The new members of next year’s SBA Board must remember that they serve the students as a whole. This is, and should always remain, the SBA’s priority. A possible first step for next year’s Board is to develop a comprehensive communication plan, perhaps starting with a workable website.
As for the rest of us, we can make our selections on the candidates we feel would best develop a culture of transparency and facilitate open dialogue by voting in this week’s elections.
UPDATE: 2011-2012 USD LAW SBA PRESIDENT ELECTED
UPDATE: 2011 Elections: WINNING CANDIDATES & VOTING TALLIES
5 Several members of the General Council (which is composed of one representative from each student organization) were confused about the issue at hand and requested more information. The representative from the Health Law Society cast an “abstain” vote (citing SBA Bylaws) until the SBA disclosed further information regarding the appointment of the new committee members and the issue at hand. It is unclear whether the committee members ever received the information they requested from the SBA, and the SBA declined to disclose the results of this vote.
The Motions staff felt it was in the best interest of everyone involved to refrain from using student names in this article. Members of the Motions staff contacted approximately 70 students to request statements and information. The majority of these students expressly declined to comment. Those who did comment consisted of students within the following groups: current SBA board members and officers, candidates currently running for SBA office, students who expressed opinions on Facebook, and the general USD Law student population. Our goal for this article was to inform the student body of the facts surrounding this year’s SBA election and the general lack of SBA communication in an objective, unbiased manner. We appreciate all those individuals who helped us in this process. If you have comments or questions regarding this article, please contact us at motions@sandiego.edu. All comments directly posted on this page must abide by the Motions Comment Policy.
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Good reporting Motions.
Great article! In my opinion, the SBA responses would probably be better received by the student body if the SBA accepted a little more responsibility for the mistakes that have been made in the past, instead of making excuses. I appreciate that motions has taken the time to check into the “reasons” given by the SBA. It really isn’t that hard to send out a mass e-mail. With all the information the rest of us are receiving on Facebook from the candidates, at least we know (or hope) the next administration will keep us a little more informed.
You tried contacting 70 people for this article? Somehow I doubt that, seeing as I am a 3L Representative (whose email you quoted) and you didn’t even contact me. I would have been glad to comment on this article if you had asked.
I agree with Laura above. The most disappointing thing about this to me was that the people who actually were responsible just sort of stepped back and let upset students attack the candidates who had nothing to do with how this all went about. The election committee as well as the exec board should have just admitted to dropping the ball on this and offered solutions for what they could do better the next time. There would have been much less drama. I was also disappointed in the SBA President’s response. To say things like “…the elections were publicized multiple times in the SBA meetings which are open to all students, in the SBA minutes of multiple meetings[.]“? Come on now. If she really feels that the promotion of the elections was adequate and they did all they could, then okay, but it’s a bit absurd. I just would like to have seen more accountability on behalf of SBA, that’s all.
So if you didn’t contact someone who was directly involved in calling the emergency SBA meeting after hearing complaints from students, was indirectly quoted in the article, and is a part of SBA (albeit not an executive board member), who did you contact? I’m not trying to call your credibility into question, I just am honestly pretty surprised I wouldn’t have been contacted on an issue as important as this…
Because of the time frame and the large number of students who attend USD Law, Motions could not reasonably contact every student who has a vested interest in the matter. Our desire was to solicit diverse statements from a broad spectrum of students with different thoughts and experiences. We contacted over 70 total students. In regards to soliciting students involved with SBA, Motions contacted 10 SBA Board/Officers, 3 members of the Honor Court, 1 Committee Chair, and several officers of student organizations. We also conferred with the Office for J.D. Student Affairs in order to ensure our factual reporting was accurate. Motions encourages students to express their views and opinions in the comments section if they so desire.
I understand that “Motions could not reasonably contact every student who has a vested interest in the matter”–I just would have thought that the people THAT YOU QUOTED IN THE ARTICLE and later blamed for not sending out a blast email about Motions going online (which apparently happened because you didn’t email the 3L Rep email) would have been at least 3 of the 70 people you would contact, instead of people who probably had no idea what was going on (hence the “no comments”). Perhaps it is just be that whole “objective journalism” thing I used to do for my school paper back in undergrad talking…
I mean shoot, I don’t disagree with most of the article (other than the factual errors such as the so called “opt-in” thing that you talked about which I have never heard of and the fact that this is clearly an opinion piece filed in the “news” section). You are right that SBA could have done a much better job informing students about the election–hence why when I heard students complaining about the matter, as a 3L Representative, I emailed the entire SBA Exec Board to inform them of student complaints and asked them to call an emergency meeting: they did, and they resolved the issue.
The reason the appeals never took place was because the issue was resolved before they would have happened…which would make it nonsensical to go through with them.
Other than that, not a bad article!
I would like to clarify two things for our readers:
1. The quote to which Steve Britt refers is the announcement about the SBA’s new website that appeared in an October 18 and October 26 “weekly email” distributed to 3L students from the “usdlaw3l” email address. The weekly email consists of basic information regarding upcoming events and appears not as a personal email but rather an informative mass-mailing. The language is taken verbatim from those two October emails.
2. On September 22, 2010, I emailed the 3L Reps at their “usdlaw3l” email address requesting publicity for the new Motions Online website, as well as requesting the SBA to inform students about the opportunity to become offical “users” of our site. I never received a reply, and no SBA member ever publicized our launch. Additionally, I emailed an SBA Board Member on September 21, 2010 requesting the same information and offering to collaborate with the SBA on its new website. That Board Member responded to me and promised to “make sure to bring it up.” The Board Member’s email response also CC’d a 2L Rep’s USD Law email address and a 3L Rep’s Gmail address. The CC’d 3L Rep was not Steve Britt. Again, no SBA member ever publicized our launch.
Regarding this lack of SBA communication and assistance, the facts are clear. The emails exist. To clear up the confusion, I have linked images of the emails (with redacted personal information) within the article itself. As readers will see, I sent the emails as explained in the article and in this comment. See Footnote 2.
And although I appreciate the praise Steve Britt has given to this article, I respectfully disagree with his suggestion that this article does not reflect “objective journalism.” Besides the extensive work the Motions staff put in to ensure a factually accurate and objective piece of news reporting, the article provides a forum for comments to voice any concerns. Whether we should have contacted the 3L Reps to ask about these emails or not is, of course, arguable. But Steve Britt’s voice is being heard now, and that’s the point.
Are we talking about that two lines of quotations from the 3L Reps? It hardly seems pertinent to the article anyway, but aside from that I’m not sure how it’s blaming anyone for anything. It was just pointing out that someone let people know the SBA site was still down and coming soon. BUT! I’m forever missing things, so maybe ya’ll are talking about something else.
They gave props to the emergency meeting and the e-mail that was sent out because of it.
Also…just curious, but wasn’t the point of Motions comments about the “opt-in” thing that no one knew about it? Doesn’t look good that a 3L Rep didn’t know it existed… I didn’t even know about it (or care) until one of the SBA folks (one of the 2L Reps) mentioned it in some comment he made on Facebook. Maybe it’s just something he whipped up himself, but either way, that hardly seems like a legit way to communicate, and if he didn’t let you other reps know about it, that’s another missing cog.
This is hardly an opinion piece. It’s almost pure facts and info.
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Britt’s assertion that this article is an opinion piece. I know for a fact that the authors took great care in ensuring that this article was written objectively and factually. They took their job very seriously, and endeavored to report on a controversy instead of create a controversy. I would challenge anyone to find an example of the authors’ opinions inserted into this piece. It seems to me that every bit of it is quoted fact and any opinion in it is quoted opinion.
Which “10 SBA Board/Officers” were contacted for this article?
I would like to make a sincere apology. In looking at the definition of “SBA officer,” I now realize that we communicated with 9 student officers.
To further clarify, we directly communicated with 3 out of the 5 Executive Board members. The other 6 officers were Class Representatives. When gathering information, we received an official written statement adressing 6 key points e-mailed from the SBA President and signed, “The SBA Executive Board.” See Footnote 1. We originally interpreted this writing to be the Executive Board’s collective statement, but we now realize this was not the case.